During road and large surface construction a variety of equipment is utilized including machines to clean the surface of waste materials or overburden. Cleaning of these surfaces requires the moving or removal of larger waste that street sweepers cannot move but also requires industrial sweepers to clean smaller waste that are not removed with scraping equipment.
Industrial sweepers used in cleaning streets and the like have a rotating brush mounted to the front or rear of a motorized vehicle. An electric or hydraulic motor drives the rotating brush or brushes along the surface of the area being cleaned, sweeping material into a bucket. The brush is controlled from the vehicle's cab with hydraulic or electric controls. The brush of the sweeper needs to be mounted in a position to sweep the area being traversed for cleaning the surface. The present invention uses a drivable self-propelled industrial sweeper and scrapper as part of a machine for the removal of road construction overburden and waste materials during construction of a road.
Prior art street sweepers include U.S. Pat. No. 7,428,767 to Lougheed for a sweeper which has a floating brush or drum assembly. The sweeper has a rotating brush or drum supported by a float arm movably coupled to the sweeper bucket. The float arm is coupled to a linkage to movably support the float arm between a retracted position and a forward position. The float arm is rotationally coupled to the linkage to compensate for height variations and provide a mechanism to rotate the linkage to move the float arm forward relative to the debris collection bucket.
Other prior U.S. patents for street sweepers may be seen in the Hildebrand et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,756 for a Street Sweeper having an Elevating Hopper with Supporting Outriggers and in the Koester U.S. Pat. No. 6,687,939 for a Bucket Sweeper. The McDonald U.S. Pat. No. 4,037,284 is for a Sweeper Assembly while the Vanderlinden U.S. Pat. No. 6,154,911 is for a Debris Lifting Apparatus for use in a Surface Sweeping Vehicle. The Berfield et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,701,969 is for a Rotary Brush Sweeper with Easily Separable Debris Pan.
The present invention is for a self propelled drivable industrial road cleanup machine which includes a flexible road sweeper and a scrapper for removing overburden and waste during road construction.